The X Factor: TV "Talent" Show Where The Talent Play Second Fiddle (The X Factor)

Member Name: antoniakelly

Product:	The X Factor
Date:	13/11/08 (67 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Can be entertaining, good if you just want a free theme tune to a Saturday night

Disadvantages: Lack of cohesion, over-influence of judges, no career guaranteed for the eventual winner

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AN OVERVIEW
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'The X Factor' is basically a singing competition, with four categories of acts, with one category mentored by a 'judge'. Each week the acts sing a different song (usually involving a theme) which the public then vote on, with the bottom two acts being required to sing again, one of which is then eliminated by the judges. At the semi final stage, it is based purely on the public vote. The winner receives a record contract.

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THE CATEGORIES
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- Boys 25 & Under (this year mentored by Simon Cowell)
- Girls 25 & Under (Cheryl Cole)
- Groups (Louis Walsh)
- Over 25s (Danni Minogue)

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WHO'S WHO?
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Presenter: Dermot O'Leary. Holly Willoughby is in charge of spin-off show, ingeniously entitled 'The Xtra Factor'.

Simon Cowell is an A&R man with a record of making cheesy music (Robson and Jerome, Zig and Zag). He infamously turned down the Spice Girls. The X Factor is made by his production company, Syco. After initially finding TV fame on 'Pop Idol', Cowell is now more famous than almost all of the 'talent' he represents.

Louis Walsh is a manager, notably of Boyzone and Westlife.

Cheryl Cole found fame through a TV talent search herself (Popstars: The Rivals) and is in hugely successful girl group, Girls Aloud. Also married to England footballer Ashley Cole, he of the cheating infamy. 2008 is her first year as a mentor.

Danni Minogue is a solo singer who has been inflicting her mediocre music on the world for nearly a decade. Little sister of Kylie Minogue. She won the 2007 show with Leon Jackson, reasons still unknown.

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TO WATCH OR NOT TO WATCH?
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There is no doubt that, in the early stages of the competition, the show is unmissable. As the judges audition around the UK, for around four weeks highlights of the auditions are shown and they make excellent television, from the deluded wannabes to those with actual star potential.

However, as time has progressed (it is now some eight years since Popstars, the show that started it all) I have begun to doubt some of the "whacky" contestants who believe they have talent where there is none. While still entertaining, the show has lost it's veneer of believability - for some people, it is a quick-fire way to get a little television exposure.

Another way the general public have found will get them on the show is with a sob story, something I find deeply annoying, as this show should be about talent and nothing more. Especially as the sob stories the producers focus on are becoming more and more weak: last year, a lot was made of Leon Jackson's single-parent upbringing and how he wanted to "do it for [his] Mum". Thousands of people have one-parent families, for whatever reason - doesn't mean you can sing. This year, Daniel - who has at best, a mediocre voice - has made a big thing about being a widower and it saw him sail into the final round in place of far more talented acts.

For me, the show loses it's momentum with the "boot camp" stages and never really regains it. This year, a total of four hours of television was shown as the auditions reached a climax. This was basically seemingly endless hours of okay-singers, singing songs we've all heard a million times. Devoid of the humour of the first stage of auditions and not as impressive as the final rounds, "boot camp" is a tedious necessity where producers try to create drama where there is none. With "boot camp" I lose interest, and never really regain it.

With the final acts - three per category - selected, the live knock out rounds begin. I cannot fathom why 12 acts are taken into the live shows. Any act that is in the bottom two in the first, say, six weeks, is clearly never going to be popular enough to win the show and therefore the entire thing is a waste of time.

Each week has a designated "theme", which I can see both sides of. On the plus, it is going to be very difficult to have 12-plus weeks of live shows with acts just singing any which song, and a sense of cohesion is indeed needed. However, what if a viewer doesn't like the "theme" of music for that week? Mariah Carey songs make my ears bleed so an entire week of those was never going to get me watching.

The themes are broad and sweeping and even within this concept the cohesion, my one understanding for justifying the theme section, is difficult to achieve. For example, in the "disco" section, you have acts performing vastly different songs - some uptempo, like "On The Radio" and "Working My Way Back To You" and some ballads, like "Wishing On A Star", showing that just because songs may fall into the same genre, they are nothing alike and show has no real flow. Perhaps slightly more inventive themes are required that allow for this vast difference in song style. I read someone suggest "Songs That Tell A Story", which is an excellent idea, allowing for all types of tempo but keeping a familiar link between each performance.

My other problem with The X Factor has got to be the judges, most of whom I am quite convinced believe the show is only about them. The judges are asked to officiate but given a bias, which surely defeats the point entirely? A split would be a better idea - a set of mentors and a set of judges. Only once in the show's history (to my recollection) has a mentor voted against their act in the bottom two sing-off. The judges have favourites and friends among the judging panel and will vote for the mentor and not the act.

The judges' comments on each performance is an utter waste of time, as they have no say in the first round of voting and always insist they base their elimination decision on the sing-off performance, not the original. As well as this absurdity, the comments are frighteningly pedestrian and rarely contain constructive criticism. Even when a judge dislikes a performance, they simply say they hate it but rarely given a reason on how it could be improved.

The judges are constantly bickering between themselves during this segment also, and seem to forget about the poor act on stage who is witnessing it all with a growing sense of alarm. Egos abound and while Sharon Osbourne's departure helped ease this a little, it seems merely to have been replaced by a sense of overinflated confidence from Minogue.

At the beginning of this review I said that The X Factor was a talent show, but the reality is, it isn't. It is a show about likeability, sob stories and judges' fragile egos. The requirement for acts to sing songs by other artists is pointless, as what sells records is rarely a great voice, but the quality of the song they are performing. You would assume if selling records was all about talent then The X Factor winners would be wildly successful, but like most "talent" show poppets, they are failed in their released songs and disappear into nothingness. I often wonder why the auditionees and acts place so much importance on the show, when it is in no way a sure fire way of a career in the music business.

This aside, is it entertaining? Perhaps. When the acts are down to the last four or five, I will tune in but with no sense of "unmissable television". The X Factor is a television show with no real sense of what it's purpose is, as the focus is flipped between acts and judges, and no career guaranteed at the end, where even acts that don't win often secure record deals. For some it is a staple of Saturday nights, but for me, I need my television a little more inventive - or, at least, sure of what it's trying to achieve.

Summary: Unmissable for some, there's something so ingenuine about The X Factor that turns me off.